By Michael Sanserino

“I’m 26 years old,” Farris said. “I don’t get my news from television. I don’t get my news from the newspaper very often. More likely than not, I’m going to hop on MSN or Yahoo and grab my news there.”

So when Farris, owner of the tattoo shop Studio 13 Creative Skin Design, 4720 Parnell Ave., wanted to publicize his business to a younger demographic, he bypassed conventional methods.

Farris went to www.MySpace.com, which allows its registered users to easily set up their own free Web page, and created a profile for his business. He splashed the shop’s page with the Studio 13 logo and a digital slideshow of tattoos inked by the shop’s employees. He promotes concerts and events at the shop on the page and provides general business information there as well.

What Farris has done isn’t revolutionary.

“It seems like anymore I see more businesses on MySpace than I do regular people,” said Matt Sturm, a local musician and sales associate at B-Sharp Guitars, 2448 Getz Road, which has a page on MySpace.

Local concert halls, restaurants, radio stations, publications and musicians also have pages on MySpace. Someone has even created the “unofficial fan club site about Sandy Thompson,” a misspelled tribute to WANE-TV weathercaster Sandy Thomson.

Sturm said MySpace, which allows users to connect with friends through journaling and instant-messaging while allowing them to post personal information and pictures, is fashionable because “it aim towards a younger generation who perhaps isn’t quite so engulfed in paying attention to regular advertising.”

The proportion of business to personal pages on MySpace is unavailable, and unlike newspaper or online classified ads, the site offers no option to browse through business pages only.

Despite that limitation, the sheer volume of traffic on the site makes it attractive to people such as Sturm and Farris. Nearly 60 percent of self-described “trendsetters” and 33 percent of “mainstream” 14- to 34-year-olds have a social-networking page on sites such as MySpace, MSN Groups and Facebook.com, according to a June 30 article from TrendWatching.com, an online publication scouting consumer trends. In May, MySpace

.com was the eighth most-visited Web site on the Internet, with 43.5 million hits, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, a media-research company. In all, 92 million members worldwide call MySpace home.

Farris says MySpace appeals to him as a small-business owner because of its multimedia capabilities and its price. “I didn’t have to pay a single penny for it,” he said. “It was free advertising, and it reached a lot of our customers.”

A spokeswoman at News Corp., the parent company of MySpace.com and Fox Broadcasting Co., said businesses are welcome on MySpace. “For local businesses, MySpace provides the ability to extend a conversation from the neighborhood to a broader audience in the online world,” she said.

News Corp. has used the Web site to promote movies such as “X-Men III: The Last Stand” and “The Devil Wears Prada,” produced by 20th Century Fox, a News Corp. subsidiary.

News Corp. sells space to companies, generally larger ones, that want an ad to appear on every MySpace

.com page. And it also allows advertisers to choose which sections of MySpace on which they want their ads displayed. According to a June article from The Wall Street Journal, the Walt Disney Co. created a page for “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” and bought an ad for it on MySpace’s main page. But it did not run ads on personal pages, to distance the movie from possibly inappropriate content, the newspaper reported.

While large companies such as Disney pay News Corp. to create pages for them, small businesses – such as Studio 13 – are able to create their own for free. Just as teenagers with MySpace pages do, businesses can invite people to join their personal networks, send messages to other people and businesses with pages, and post messages on their Web sites. Sturm eventually would like to offer coupons and feature local artists on the store’s page.

Disney’s “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” account on MySpace is linked to about 88,000 MySpace users through the “friend” option. Studio 13 can boast only about 900.

Steven T. Broas, publisher of The News-Sentinel and chief executive officer of Fort Wayne Newspapers, said MySpace and similar Web sites offering free advertising aren’t as successful as paid newspaper advertising.

“We’ve built a marketplace. … Our history is that classified advertising in the newspaper works,” said Broas, a former vice president of advertising at the Kansas City Star. The newspapers also offer online classifieds at www.fortwayne.com.

“I’m concerned about all competitors, but I’m working on improving our services and product offerings. I’m not focused on MySpace.com or any specific competitor.”

Guitar salesman Sturm said anything that skews young has a certain shelf life. “The important thing is to utilize it while it’s still there but not put a whole lot of stock into it.”

Farris disagrees.

“People thought the Internet was a fad,” he said. “Companies that have prospered on the Internet just continue to do so. A lot of things come and go, especially with the Internet, but I think MySpace has longevity.

“I can’t imagine that MySpace won’t cater to the different demographics as time changes.”